This Thursday (October 10), Glee will address the death of series regular Cory Monteith in its “Farewell To Finn” episode titled “The Quarterback.” At a screening of the season premiere of American Horror Story: Coven, Glee co-creator and showrunner Ryan Murphy discussed the difficulties of putting the tribute episode together.

“Brad [Falchuk] and Ian [Brennan] and I wrote that episode and Brad directed it, and those performances that you’ll see … almost everything in that episode is from the first take of every performance,” Murphy said at the event, as reported by The Huffington Post. “The actors and the crew had a really hard time shooting it. I’ve never seen a crew that you can’t continue shooting because they’ve left the room sobbing. It was very hard.”

He continued by noting that a few of Glee‘s cast members who weren’t originally supposed to be in the episode asked if they could take part:

What I loved about it is, you know when you write something like that, there’s no right way to do it, so we wrote it and we put people who were under contract to the show in it, and a lot of the actors contacted me and said, ‘I just love him so much — can I please be a part of it?’ So we put those people in. Iqbal [Theba], for example, who plays the principal and is now the janitor, was not written into that episode, but personally called up Brad and I and said, ‘For him, I want to be in it.’

Hear the tear-jerking songs from this Thursday’s episode of Glee below — all of which are now available on iTunes as part of The Quarterback EP.

Full Cast — “Seasons Of Love”

Amber Riley (Mercedes) — “I’ll Stand By You”

Chord Overstreet (Sam) & Kevin McHale (Artie) — “Fire & Rain”

Naya Rivera (Santana) — “If I Die Young”

Mark Salling (Puck) — “No Surrender”

Lea Michele (Rachel) — “Make You Feel My Love”

Will you be tuning in to watch Glee say goodbye to Finn Hudson this week? Let us know below, or by hitting us up on Facebook and Twitter.